Ashford International Law P.C.

Ashford International Law P.C. accepts referrals and co-counsel engagements from U.S. tax advisors, including CPAs, enrolled agents and tax attorneys, whose clients have assets, income, family or an inheritance outside the United States, or who are not U.S. citizens. The firm’s practice concentrates on cross-border estate, trust and tax matters, most often involving Western Europe, especially Germany, France and Switzerland. These matters typically come to the firm when a return or filing turns on foreign law or a treaty: how a foreign trust or foundation is classified, where an asset is located for estate tax purposes and what treaty relief applies, how a foreign inheritance is reported, or what withholding applies to a distribution to a beneficiary abroad. Depending on what the matter requires, the firm advises alongside the client’s existing advisors or handles the cross-border work in full. The firm also forms U.S. subsidiaries for Western European family-owned businesses and acts as their outside counsel, including on the tax and succession questions these structures raise. Collectively, the firm’s attorneys are licensed to practice law in California, Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Germany.

The firm is led by attorney Caroline E. Ashford, PhD, JD. Dr. Ashford is a graduate of Columbia University Law School. Her practice focuses on international estate planning and the taxation and administration of estates and trusts with foreign elements. She has 17 years of experience in cross-border private client matters. Dr. Ashford is also licensed to practice law in Germany and is an IRS-registered tax preparer. She advises in English, German as well as French.

Examples of what we handle on the U.S. side

• Resident and nonresident estate and gift taxes: situs analysis, the $60,000 exemption, treaty relief, blocker structures, Forms 706, 706-NA, 709, 709-NA, and transfer certificates;
• Ancillary probate and administration of U.S. assets for foreign estates, executors, and fiduciaries
• Trusts across legal systems: recognition in civil-law jurisdictions, foreign grantor and nongrantor classification, the throwback rules, migration and decanting, and the QDOT for a non-citizen surviving spouse;
• Distributions to foreign beneficiaries: withholding, Forms 1042 and 1042-S, Schedule K-1, W-8 documentation, and fiduciary and transferee liability;
• U.S. compliance and remediation: FBAR, Forms 8938, 3520 and 3520-A, FATCA classification, delinquent filings, and the reasonable-cause record;
• Tax treaty analysis: residence tie-breakers, the saving clause, treaty withholding rates and limitation on benefits, estate and gift tax treaty relief, totalization agreements, and Form 8833 disclosure;
• Pre-immigration and exit planning: the planning window before a move, §877A and covered-expatriate status, and the §2801 tax on gifts and bequests;
• Marital property and succession conflicts: how a German, French, Swiss, Italian, or Belgian regime, forced heirship, and the EU Succession Regulation interact with a U.S. estate plan;
• U.S. real estate and securities for non-U.S. investors, including FIRPTA and the PFIC treatment of inherited funds.

Details of some of the services:

Distributions and payments to beneficiaries abroad

• Withholding analysis on every distribution: determining whether a payment to a foreign beneficiary is FDAP or effectively connected, and what rate applies before the payment is released.
• Treaty rate determinations: establishing entitlement to a reduced or zero rate under the applicable income-tax treaty, including limitation-on-benefits analysis and the documentation the institution must hold to support it.
• Forms 1042, 1042-S, and 1042-T: preparing and reviewing the reporting that follows a distribution, reconciling it with Schedules K-1, and correcting prior-year filings.
• Schedule K-1 versus 1042-S: handling reporting distributions from a U.S. estate or trust to a nonresident beneficiary.
• Distributable net income and character tracing: allocating DNI across beneficiaries in different countries so that each receives the correct characterization and credit.
• Backup withholding, TIN, and ITIN issues: obtaining ITINs for foreign beneficiaries, curing missing or invalid numbers, and avoiding the 24% backup withholding on distributions.

Documentation, classification, and account-level compliance

• W-8 documentation files: building and auditing the W-8BEN, W-8BEN-E, W-8IMY, and W-8ECI files that support a reduced rate, including the treatment of hybrid entities, foreign trusts, and estates.
• Presumption rules: advising on the consequences when documentation is missing, expired, or unreliable, and on the curing procedures available before a payment.
• FATCA classification of estates, trusts, and family entities as FFIs, NFFEs, or exempt persons, including registration, GIIN, and reporting consequences.
• Withholding-agent liability: assessing the institution’s own exposure for under-withholding, payment of US and overseas death-related taxes, interest, and penalties, and designing the controls that prevent it.
• Account onboarding and periodic review for accounts with non-U.S. owners, beneficiaries, or signatories, integrated with the institution’s existing KYC process.
• OFAC, sanctions, and AML screening of beneficiaries, payees, and counterparties before a distribution or transfer is made.

Fiduciary liability, release of assets, and estate closing

• 31 U.S.C. §3713 personal liability: the fiduciary’s exposure for paying beneficiaries before the government, and the sequencing that avoids it.
• IRC §6324 transferee and personal liability: the estate-tax lien, the long reach of transferee liability against beneficiaries abroad, and how a fiduciary protects itself.
• Transfer certificates (IRS Form 5173): obtaining, and advising institutions that require, the certificate before U.S. securities, accounts, or other assets are released to a foreign estate.
• Situs determinations for custodians and transfer agents: whether a given holding is U.S.-situs property whose release triggers estate-tax procedures.
• Refunding agreements, waivers, indemnities, and holdbacks: drafting the instruments that let a fiduciary distribute while a foreign tax, claim, or filing remains open.
• Discharge, closing, and record retention: the documentation that supports a fiduciary’s release when beneficiaries and assets are outside the United States.

Trust and estate administration with foreign parties

• Probate proceedings involving foreign heirs, foreign wills, foreign forced-heirship claims, or absent beneficiaries.
• Litigation involving foreign heirs, foreign wills or foreign forced-heirship claims.
• Foreign beneficiaries of U.S. trusts: reporting, withholding, distribution planning, and the beneficiary’s home-country consequences, communicated in the beneficiary’s language where needed.
• Non-U.S. settlors and grantors: the classification of the trust, the grantor-trust consequences, and the reporting the trustee owes while the settlor is living and after.
• Foreign assets held by U.S. estates and trusts: FBAR and Form 8938 obligations, including the signature-authority exposure of individual trust officers.
• Forms 3520 and 3520-A where a U.S. fiduciary or beneficiary deals with a foreign trust.
• Successor and co-trustee arrangements across jurisdictions, and the migration, domestication, or decanting of a trust whose beneficiary base has moved abroad.

Institutional support

• Standing counsel arrangements for trust companies, banks, broker-dealers, and family offices on the cross-border questions that recur in their books of business.
• Policy, procedure, and control design: screening protocols, escalation paths, and distribution checklists for accounts with foreign connections.
• File reviews and remediation: reviewing a portfolio of accounts or matters for unaddressed withholding, documentation, or reporting exposure, and correcting it.
• Training for trust officers, operations, and compliance teams, delivered in-house or through the firm’s webinar programme.

A library for advisers

We publish a growing library of technical guides written for professionals rather than clients — on situs and treaty relief, foreign-trust classification, withholding on distributions, PFICs, matrimonial-property regimes, and the engagement of foreign counsel. Most are free to download and to share within your firm, and a webinar program accompanies them.